Private Military Companies (catch all)

[SWJ Blog]

The Status of Private Military Companies: When Civilians and Mercenaries Blur

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[davidbfpo]

An interesting article on PMCs even if it is essentially based on a new book, by Sean McFate, a contractor and academic: The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order

Nowt happening, move along now:

The U.S. used contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan more than it had in any war in its history: in 2010 there were more contractors deployed to war zones (207,000) than U.S. servicemembers (175,000). In World War II, contractors only made up 10 percent of the military workforce, according to McFate.

Link:http://www.theamericanconservative.c...r-world-order/

Another author, Peter Singer (who has his own book):

In an idealized world the companies with the best practices and best performance records would end up with all the contracts, and the bad actors would be eliminated from the field, that hasn’t happened in regular business, much less when you cross regular business with what you call politics.

[davidbfpo]

Via WoTR:

Watch Sean McFate discuss his new book, The Modern Mercenary, at the National Defense University. Sean offers an insider’s understanding of the opaque private military world, how its presence can change the future of war and world order as we know it.

Link to eighty minutes:http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/wha...n-mercenaries/

[davidbfpo]

From the UK Defence in Depth blog the first opinion polling of PMC personnel. The autho opens with:

The data presented here was drawn from a large-scale study of armed private security contractors, of which this blog post is one aspect. The study set out to explore the perceptions and realities of being a private security contractor after military service. Of the men and women who completed the survey (n=1516), 86% had prior military experience, of which 65% served in the UK Armed Forces, 16% in the U.S. Armed Forces, and the remaining 19% were from countries other than the UK and US. This blog post focuses on the 65% of UK Armed Forces, herein referred to as the ‘sample population.’

Link:http://defenceindepth.co/2015/11/09/...-armed-forces/

[davidbfpo]

Hardly a shock, although being a UK-based charity and newspaper they would say that - just teasing.

The charity report:http://www.waronwant.org/media/new-r...s-war%E2%80%99
The short article:http://www.theguardian.com/business/...y-says-charity

[davidbfpo]

More of a follow-on to the above post, with a human focus appearing and one almost wonders if a PR person has been spinning hard:http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...ldier-for-hire

[davidbfpo]

A short article from The Atlantic and one passage says it all:

...the United States has developed a dependency on the private sector to wage war, a strategic vulnerability. Today, America can no longer go to war without the private sector.

Link:http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...-obama/495731/